Much of life can never be explained, only witnessed.'
- Rachel Naomi Remen, MD
NAIROBI (AFP) - A baby hippopotamus
that survived the tsunami waves on the Kenyan coast, has formed a strong
bond with a giant male century-old tortoise in an animal facility in
the port city of Mombassa , officials said.
The hippopotamus,
nicknamed Owen and weighing about 300 kilograms (650 pounds), was swept down
Sabaki River into the Indian Ocean , then forced back to shore when
tsunami waves struck the Kenyan coast on December 26, before wildlife rangers
rescued him.
'It is incredible. A-less-than-a-year-old
hippo has adopted a male tortoise, about a century old, and the tortoise seems
to be very happy with being a 'mother',' ecologist Paula Kahumbu, who is
in charge of Lafarge Park , told AFP.
'After it was swept away and lost its mother,
the hippo was traumatized. It had to look for something to be a surrogate
mother. Fortunately, it landed on the tortoise and established a strong bond.
They swim, eat and sleep together,' the ecologist
added.
'The hippo follows the tortoise exactly the way it followed
its mother. If somebody approaches the tortoise, the hippo becomes
aggressive, as if protecting its biological mother,' Kahumbu added.
'The hippo is a young baby, he was left at a
very tender age and by nature, hippos are social animals that like to stay with
their mothers for four years,' he explained.
'Life is not measured by the number of
breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away.'
This is a real story that shows that our
differences don't matter much when we need the comfort of another
The greatness of humanity is not in being human, but in being humane.
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